The Way to Love Allah – how do we love Allah SWT who is beyond our senses.
In the name of Allah most Beneficient ever Merciful
The focus or main point of Tasawaff or Sufism is – love.
“Being in love is made manifest by soreness of heart; there is no sickness like heart-sickness. The lover’s ailment is seperate from all other ailments: love is the astrolabe (a means to unravel) the mysteries of God. “. Mathnawi
Our Pir O Murshid, Dr Hakim Hazrath Khwaja Sayed Shareef Ahmed Ali Shah RA (lovingly known as Hazrath Poona Wale Shah Saab RA) said: “Peer dil meh utharna, yeh hae sub seh bhari baath”. (Put your Pir O Murshid into your heart, meaning love him, this is the greatest thing.)
Now I put forward a question for you to think about. Why? What are we going to love our Pir for? Is it his looks, is it his wealth, is it his knowledge or the way he talks. What?
The answer: We must love him for the sake of Allah SWT. He is Allah’s SWT ‘Khalifa’ (representative).
The Prophets and the Aulia Allah are the link to Allah SWT.
Throughout history, humanity received guidance through them. Look through history and you would see that there is no other way. Guidance comes to humanity through Allah’s chosen ones.
To further reinforce this teaching, that the way to Allah SWT is through His chosen ones, we remind you of the dua /prayer in Surah Al Fatiha. We pray to be guided and Allah SWT teaches us that we can gain His guidance by following His chosen ones. It is present tense and we have to find such people in our lifetime. Surah Al Fatiha is “ummul Khitab” so I do not need to stress how very important this is.
Consider this carefully: can we love someone whom we have not met? It’s not possible. Allah SWT is beyond our physical perception. So the way to loving Allah SWT is to love those around us especially, His chosen ones.
The Holy Prophet Salalahu Alayhe Wa-Aalihi Wasallam once asked
“Do you know which of the actions is dearest to the Glorious Allah? Someone replied prayer and charity and someone else said Jihad. The Holy Prophet Salalahu Alayhe Wasallam said: The action dearest to the Almighty Allah is love for Allah’s sake and hate for Allah’s sake.”Al Hadis. 1:4:29:273.
In our novel, Doolhun The Bride (visit: anjumanwm.co.za to read/listen), we talk about love at length. You see, true love is about giving away our hearts, and when we do this, we no longer have control of our lives. The beloved has control. Remember this. I will refer to it again.
Now. if we give our heart to the wrong person, they can misdirect us or they can end up breaking our hearts.
We need to remember that there is always that push from our carnal desires to do things to please our passions or carnal desires. Our passions will want beauty, nobility, wealth, status, basking in the limelight with people praising us. These are the very things that shaitaan would use to distract us from Allah SWT and if we put these things in our heart, it will come with a huge price tag at the end of our lives. It is therefore, wrong. Allah SWT must be our primary goal especially when it comes to love.
When we surrender our hearts to our Pir-o-Murshid, he is in charge. Remember what I said earlier, love is about giving away our hearts, and when we do this, then we no longer have control of our lives.
Imagine if we give our hearts away to someone regular who is flawed. They will then have control of us and can potentially ruin us as opposed to a person whom Allah SWT has chosen to guide us.
So now, if our Pir-o-Murshid is in our hearts, no matter what shaitaan tries he would not gain access. What’s more, shaitaan will become a stepping stone for us to attain greater insights and get closer to our Creator. Our faith is earned by us having to strive for it and we will value it far more because we strived for it.
Giving away our hearts to a Pir O Murshid is not like giving our hearts to others where they can manipulate and selfishly misuse us.
In primarily loving a pir o murshid we will not not only experience the joys of our other worldly relationships but these relationships will end up being better because they will be based on Allah SWT and our religion first.
So we will have the very best of all these relationships as well, because we will have our Pir’s guidance and blessings.
If you depict a portrait on the paper as sorrowful, this picture knows nothing of sorrow or joy. Its appearance is sorrowful, but it is free from that (sorrow); And this (worldly) sorrow and joy which influences the heart are nothing but a picture in comparison with that (spiritual) joy and sorrow. The picture’s smiling appearance is for your sake, in order that by means of that picture the reality may be established (rightly understood by you). Mathnawi
There are different ways to get close to Allah SWT such as through knowledge but the best and the highest way is through love. When it comes to attaining ‘emaan’, love is mentioned as a foundation of emaan in different scenarios.
One: The Holy Prophet Muhammad Salallahu Alayhe Wa-Alahi Wasallam told his companions: You will not believe until you love me more than your parents, children and all of humanity. This is how we must love our pir.
Two: Then he says: You will not believe until you love for others what you love for yourself for the sake of Allah.
Can you see, by these sayings of our Holy Prophet (SAW) we see that emaan is primarily about love.
Love for others and such, now these are excellent teachings, these teachings will bring us happiness and all round success. If we practice these teachings then we’re definitely not going to be wealthy but far superior.
We will get to experience Allah’s bounty, mercy, pleasure and we will experience Him being Ar-Razak, the sustainer. This is priceless! END